snark: a (well-deserved) attitude of mocking irreverence and sarcasm

July 28, 2019

OK, it's a truism that when a headline includes a question mark, the answer usually is "No." But I'm not asking if something is wrong with officials at the City of Salem, Oregon variety. (Not to be confused with the witch'y Salem in Massachusetts.)

Rather, it seems clear to me -- based on the evidence below -- that City officials indeed are acting in decidedly screwy ways. But I'm not sure what the cause of that screwy wrongness is. I'll throw out one idea at the end of this post. Feel free to add your own in a comment.

For those unfamiliar with how city government here in Salem is organized, these are some basic facts.

(1) We have a strong City Manager, weak Mayor/City Council setup. The Mayor and eight city councilors make up the City Council. Those nine people have no staff of their own. They aren't even paid, being volunteers. So they're dependent on City officials for just about everything.

Steve Powers, City Manager

(2) Policies supposedly are established by the City Council, then implemented by the City Manager and his staff (the current City Manager is Steve Powers). But as I said in the above-linked blog post:

So as a City of Salem web page says, "While the City Council and Mayor set laws, policies and goals for the City of Salem, the City Manager and City Departments implement them."

Thus there's a considerable inertia that has to be overcome before citizens start seeing tangible signs of changed policies.

Here's some examples of what's been going wrong at City Hall lately.

Climate Action Plan being knowingly weakened. Steve Powers, the City Manager, knows full well that the Climate Action Plan called for in the Strategic Plan approved by the City Council is intended to have a broad scope, including carbon pollution being emitted everywhere in Salem.

Hopefully the City Manager isn't trying to undermine the Climate Action Plan. But his past actions, where Powers knowingly lied about the nature of the Climate Action Plan, certainly call into question his good intentions.

Open Streets event cancelled for 2019. Salem keeps slipping in comparison to other Oregon cities when it comes to being cycling-friendly. We're going backwards, not forwards, in national assessments of how easy and enjoyable it is to ride a bicycle in Salem.

In 2013, 2014, and 2015 there was a Salem Sunday Streets event. Then it was cancelled in 2016. It came back in 2017 and 2018. Now it has been cancelled again. Here's part of my 2016 post, "Tell City officials you want a bigger and better Salem Sunday Streets."

I don't know why the City of Salem's support for Salem Sunday Streets has slipped so much.

Being a citizen activist on various local issues, I'm concerned that the folks currently running City Hall are letting their lust for a billion dollar Third Bridge across the Willamette take precedence over much-needed improvements to Salem's cycling and pedestrian infrastructure.

The more people experience the joy of getting around town without a car, the less need there will be for an already unnecessary Third Bridge and other costly expansions of Salem's roads. Fred Kent, founder of the Project for Public Spaces, is quoted in a book I'm reading, "This Is Where You Belong."

"If you plan cities for cars and traffic, you get cars and traffic. If you plan for people and places, you get people and places."

City officials kept on pushing for a Third Bridge long after it was obvious that a majority on the City Council favored killing this boondoggle, which eventually happened.

Likewise, City officials are dragging their feet on improving the ability of residents to get around town on bicycles, as evidenced by the lack of support for Open Streets events that are wildly popular in Portland, Eugene, and other Oregon cities. So what gives?

Steve Powers reportedly was a cyclist when he came to Salem for the City Manager job from Ann Arbor, Michigan.

But he is doing exactly nothing, so far as I can tell, to wean City officials off of their addiction to big expensive road improvements that are aimed at what the Breakfast on Bikes blogger calls "hydraulic autoism" -- a mindless continuation of failed transportation policies that are a major contributor to the global warming caused by carbon pollution.

Crazy public library policies. Librarians have a reputation of being pleasingly boring. When was the last time you heard a director of a public library call for something that makes citizens think, WTF?

But Sarah Strahl, the director of the Salem Public Library, along with other City officials, have been involved in two decidedly WTF policy decisions recently that have bothered people who previously were strongly supportive of the library.

First, Strahl and Co. engaged in a massive book removal effort called by opponents of this bad idea, the Big Weed. City officials never were able to explain why they wanted to discard so many books for no good reason. They just kept on doing it, until the City Council stepped in and the Big Weed was first paused, then stopped entirely.

Second, somehow Strahl and other City officials thought it would be a great idea to house a temporary library in a building owned by the Salem Alliance Church, the most notorious anti-LGBTQ rights organization in Salem.

Unsurprisingly, a large public outcry resulted.

The Salem Human Rights Commission unanimously voted to oppose this plan, since members of the LGBTQ community wouldn't use the library if it was in a building owned by a church that considers them second-class citizens (the church rejects same-sex marriage and considers same-sex sex to be a sin).

City officials in Salem choose gay-hating church to house public library, tell LGBTQ people to head to Portland or Eugene if they want to read books during next two years

SALEM, OREGON -- Last Monday the Salem City Council voted 6-1 to pay the Salem Alliance Church for use of a building the church owns as a temporary public library, ignoring pleas from members of the LGBTQ community.

"We won't use the library if it is in a building owned by a church that considers us second-class citizens," said one exceedingly gay person wearing a purple blazer and a perfectly matching tie who testified at the council meeting, wiping away tears as they spoke.

City officials came in for criticism after claiming that in Oregon's capital city, which has a popularion of over 160,000, there were no other buildings available to lease with 16,000 square feet of empty space.

When asked to comment on this claim, a commercial realtor in Salem fell to the ground laughing uproariously for a full five minutes, then said, "Great joke! You're kidding me, right?"

A spokesman for the City of Salem issued this statement at a news conference where reporters asked how anyone could think it was a good idea to house the public library in the most un-gay-friendly building in the city.

"Hey, this is Salem. We aren't exactly known for being cutting-edge in anything, including human rights. Anyone who lives here and is lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender, or whatever the heck 'Q' stands for, should understand that Portland and Eugene are the LGBTQ hot spots in western Oregon.

They've got public libraries that would be glad to check out books to members of our community who have the unreasonable expectation of using a library building that isn't owned by a homophobic organization. Just an hour's drive away, assuming you don't hit a traffic jam, which, in the case of Portland, is pretty much anytime. Suck it up, gay people."

So again, I'm convinced City of Salem officials all-too-often are on the wrong track when it comes to important policy decisions Why this is happening is unclear.

The leaders of an organization create a climate within which employees operate. So the City Manager, Steve Powers, bears the most responsibility for what's been going wrong at City Hall. Problem is, I don't sense much enthusiasm or interest among City Council members in ending those screw-ups.

Which means, likely we can expect more things going wrong at the City of Salem in the future.

UPDATE: Yikes! I forgot to include this tweet from Salem's famous Angry Owl about huge cost overruns on the new Police Facility being built by the City of Salem. But, hey, what's a few million dollars to City officials? They can always get citizens to pay more in taxes. Which just happened.

June 09, 2019

That's the least profane word I can come up with to describe how Steve Powers, Salem's City Manager, is acting toward a Climate Action Plan that is one of the City Council's priorities, yet Powers is doing his best to kill.

Steve Powers

In a staff report for Monday's City Council meeting, where the budget for the next fiscal year will be discussed, Powers describes the Climate Action Plan in a way that shows he is either astoundingly clueless about what it is, or he is deliberately lying.Download City of Salem Budget Supplemental Report

Given what follows, lying seems by far the most likely.

Here's what Powers said in a section about three amendments proposed at a Budget Committee hearing that received support, but not enough votes to be included in the budget proposal.

This is completely and utterly false. It's the sort of falsehood that would be par for the course for our incessantly-lying President, but which is shockingly shameful when it comes from a supposedly professional city manager of Oregon's capital city.

A climate action plan would more closely study Salem’s carbon emissions, waste management and planning policies, and set goals to curb carbon emissions for decades to come.

City Manager Powers must know what a Climate Action Plan is, since this has been discussed by city councilors and others for several years, being part of the Strategic Plan for the City of Salem that was adopted in October 2017. Here it is, on page 20:

So not only is Steve Powers failing to act in accord with the Strategic Plan that's supposed to point the way for City of Salem actions, it sure seems like he is knowingly trying to mislead citizens about what a Climate Action Plan is.

And there isn't any doubt that the $50,000 Powers wrongly says is for "tree planting" and other immediate actions actually is intended to be money to get a Climate Action Plan off the ground.

Here's another excerpt from the Salem Reporter story. Andersen refers to City Councilor Tom Andersen.

Andersen believes the city could at least start the work. He proposed the budget committee to give an extra $50,000 for a consultant to get started on a climate action plan.

It's really disturbing that City Manager Powers is acting in such a duplicitous fashion. This should make city councilors, and indeed everybody in Salem, wonder what else Powers is deceiving about. If he's willing to knowingly mischaracterize a Climate Action Plan, how can he be trusted about anything else he says?

This certainly shows that Powers doesn't care about global warming and the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. That alone makes him a poor fit for Salem, where people do care a lot about preserving the Earth for both ourselves and future generations.

Hopefully members of the City Council and other citizens will grill Powers about why he chose to lie about the Climate Action Plan in his supplemental report concerning the budget.

i say "lie," because it is extremely difficult for me to believe that Powers is clueless about what a Climate Action Plan consists of, given that it is part of the city's Strategic Plan.

NEXT DAY UPDATE: I got this email response from Steve Powers. Pretty lame. Powers ignores these facts: (1) He ignored the fact that Councilor Andersen and other members of the Budget Committee want $50,000 in the next fiscal year budget to begin work on a Climate Action Plan, and (2) He ignored the fact that he totally mischaracterized what that $50,000 was to be used for, instead substituting his own notion that planting trees is equivalent to beginning work on a Climate Action Plan, which obviously it isn't.

Brian,

Thank you for the email.

The Salem Strategic Plan adopted in 2017 is a five-year plan to guide progress on City Council priorities. Annual Policy Agendas flow from the Salem Strategic Plan.

The 2019 Policy Agenda includes a greenhouse gas inventory. The inventory has been completed. The 2019 Policy Agenda does not include a climate action plan.

January 17, 2019

I'm not a fan of the whole deep state thing when Trump supporters use the term to denigrate career federal employees who are simply trying to do their job as best they can.

But rightly or wrongly, deep state has become a sort of shorthand for government officials hanging on to past policy positions after the political winds of change have begun blowing in a different direction. So that's how I'm using the term.

After quite a few years of progressives being outnumbered by conservatives on the Salem City Council, they now enjoy a 6-3 majority. Tom Andersen, Cara Kaser, Sally Cook, Chris Hoy, Matt Ausec, and Jackie Leung constitute the progressive wing. Jim Lewis, Brad Nanke, and Mayor Chuck Bennett make up the conservative wing.

(Yeah, arguably Bennett is a moderate because he tends to swing left or right depending on shifting political breezes. But I still classify him as a conservative.)

Given the progressive tenor of the City Council, liberals in Salem tend to expect that actions by City of Salem staff should reflect the wishes of the voters that have changed the makeup of the council dramatically leftward in the past few elections.

However, Salem has a strong City Manager and weak City Council form of local government. By and large, City Manager Steve Powers doesn't have to change direction just because the City Council has. A new strategic planning process should change this to some extent, as the City budget should better reflect Council priorities.

But right now we're in an awkward stage where the ponderous City of Salem ship is taking longer to alter course than progressives like me would like. Here's some examples.

Third Bridge. Even though a clear majority of City Council members oppose the billion dollar (with financing costs) Salem River Crossing project, a.k.a. the Third Bridge, City staff have continued to press onward with it. At least, I'm not aware that City Manager Powers has directed his employees to stop spending time and money on the Salem River Crossing -- perhaps because Mayor Bennett remains a staunch supporter of it.

Homelessness. Recently Powers ordered a homeless camp under the Marion Street bridge to be removed, and to prevent volunteers from serving meals to the homeless at that location. While there are defensible reasons for these actions, they didn't exactly make City officials look like caring, compassionate people. I'll let an Angry Owl tweet do the talking about this.

Costco. City of Salem planning staff busily worked away on approving a controversial proposal to relocate Salem's Costco to a site along Kuebler Boulevard immediately adjacent to a residential neighborhood. The proposal was a marked departure from an earlier agreement to build a neighborhood retail shopping center there, rather than a giant regional wholesale Costco big box store.

City staff also thought it was fine to allow Costco to remove mature white oaks that are protected by a City ordinance. But the City Council rejected the Costco plan on a 5-3 vote, with five progressives outnumbering the three conservatives.

Mountain West apartment complex. This issue hasn't reached the City Council yet, but it seems a lot like the Costco situation: City of Salem staff approving a development that threatens the Heritage School and ignores the Fairview Master Plan, and refinements to it, that require construction on the Fairview property to be both environmentally sustainable and in harmony with existing developments. So once again City staff may be operating at odds with Council priorities, and prior planning decisions.

Appointment of Jim Lewis to transportation committee. Councilor Lewis not only is a strong supporter of the billion dollar Salem River Crossing boondoggle, he has zero discernible commitment to bike paths and mass transit/public transportation.

Yet Mayor Bennett has appointed one of the three conservatives on the nine-member City Council to an important committee dealing with transportation funding. Here's how the Salem Breakfast on Bikes blogger described this:

It is not difficult to see the Mayor's calculations, his bias for the SRC and preference at SKATS.

But is this something the rest of Council should embrace? The politics are not easy to discern, and it's very possible there are other battles to fight and that this is simply not worth it.

But at the same time, it is strange to have someone at the MPO, which administers significant pots of federal transportation funding, who does not skillfully and passionately advocate for the interests of the City as Council articulates them. Why the tolerance for an underminer?

Division Street trees. People in Salem love their trees. When City of Salem Public Works director Peter Fernandez made a backroom deal with the U.S. Bank president to cut down five beautiful healthy trees on downtown's State Street in 2013, there was a lot of justified outrage. So now it's 2019. Fernandez remains in his job.

And the City of Salem is still aiming to cut down large beautiful healthy downtown trees for no good reason -- in the case of the Division Street trees, to gain a few parking spaces by changing parallel parking to angled parking, even though the public was told that the new police facility would have public parking, but staff chose to eliminate that parking and cut down the trees instead.

Library book removal. It is decidedly weird that the Salem Public Library director, Sarah Strahl, apparently with the support of City Manager Powers, would choose to embark on a massive book removal project shortly after Salem voters approved a $19 million bond measure to make improvements to the library.

Dumping many thousands of books for no good reason doesn't seem like a wise way to say "thank you" to the many people in Salem who love their library and voted for the bond measure. Fortunately, citizen resistance has put a hold on the book removal effort until February 13, when the issue will be revisited by the Library Advisory Board.

Last week, I attended the Salem Public Library Advisory Board meeting and was pleased to see about 80 residents in attendance who, like me, are concerned about what is happening at the library.

The current practice of mass book removal is baffling — the wrong direction for the library and just another step in its degradation.

We are not out of shelving nor floor space. Removal of the Information and Reference Information service desk is both shocking and indefensible.

Elimination of children’s story times, special adult and children’s programs and a Branch Librarian at the West Salem Branch is a total betrayal of that community

I have been a librarian for more than 50 years and have worked in high school, community college, large public university, and several public libraries, 30 of those years at Salem Public Library.

The Salem Public Library was for many years considered by many to be one of the best, if not the best, public libraries in Oregon. Sadly, that is no longer the case.

I sincerely hope the city administration will take a long and hard look at the direction our library is going and take steps to reverse course.

Lastly, City Manager Steve Powers still seems to command the confidence of City councilors. At least, I haven't heard any rumors that his job is in jeopardy. But at some point Powers needs to show that he's acting in accord with what the people of Salem want.

Too often City staff seem to cater to special interests rather than the broad public interest. Powers has been here long enough to now own that problem. How he deals with it could determine how long he's going to remain as City Manager.

June 08, 2018

Steve Powers is the Salem City Manager. The City Manager is hired with the approval of the City Council, then he or she is in charge of all other City of Salem employees.

Someone sent me a copy of Powers' January 2017 Performance Evaluation, noting that some deficiencies noted in the evaluation seemingly were reflected in how Powers has been handling the toxic algae water crisis.

Since Salem has a strong City Manager/ weak Mayor and City Council form of government, Powers is taking on an important position. I'm hoping, and pretty confident, that he'll be better than our previous City Manager, Linda Norris, who left a lot to be desired.

I say "pretty confident" because a bit of Googling didn't turn up any obvious dirt on Powers.

It doesn't look like any citizen activist bloggers akin to me in Ann Arbor have been ranting about his poor performance as City Manager, like I've done with Linda Norris.

Indeed, it appears that over the past few years Powers has done a competent, though low-key, job as Salem's City Manager.

I've written very little about him, mostly because Powers tends to stay in the City Hall background, even though he has vastly more power than the Mayor and other members of the City Council when it comes to day-to-day operations of the City of Salem.

In public, City Manager Powers comes across as quite diffident. Meaning, he doesn't speak passionately about policy issues or engage in "rah-rah" talk that could energize the citizenry. So even though Salem has a strong City Manager form of government, so far Powers hasn't lived up to his last name -- using his position as a firm lever of power to change Salem for the better.

So this gets us to the current water quality crisis. Powers and other City officials have come in for well-deserved criticism for not notifying the public right away when test results showed high levels of cyanotoxins in the Salem water system.

The only apology I've heard from Powers has been along the lines of, I'm sorry that people have lost confidence in Salem water. But lots of people also have lost confidence in the ability of City officials to manage the toxic algae problem. In part this is due to Powers' personal style.

As I noted in the above-mentioned post, Powers isn't an eloquent or passionate speaker. He searches for words, speaking so carefully it can sound like he is trying to hide something, whereas most likely this is simply the way he is used to talking in public.

His January 2017 performance evaluation says it was based on "18 written evaluations and 19 individual interviews with your direct reports, the Mayor, members of the City Council, and a small group of leaders from partner organizations."

Here's some excerpts from the Performance Evaluation that bear on how Powers has managed the current water crisis. I've boldfaced especially pertinent feedback to Powers, and added my own comments in red.

One area for development that you might consider is taking a more assertive stance in moving initiatives forward with a greater sense of urgency and attention to detail. You may have a tendency to under-communicate or at least communicate with less urgency or intensity that some around you might expect. Some noted that it is important to “close the loop” in communications and keep people updated on the status and progress of various issues and projects.

This seems right-on. Initially Powers and other City officials did indeed "under-communicate" with the public and failed to keep Salem residents updated on what was happening with water quality test results.

A few respondents said they would appreciate a somewhat more assertive, higher profile posture with the [city] council on your part, specifically, speaking up sooner, keeping the council informed on issues, and offering possible decision choices and their consequences, positive and negative.

The City Council wasn't involved at all by City officials after a test showed a cyanotoxin in the tap water, with councilors learning of the Health Advisory alert only a few hours before it went out to the public.

While you have visited several neighborhood associations during your first year in Salem,it would be beneficial for you to be even more visible and engaged in the community.

The water crisis shows why this would have been desirable. I suspect relatively few people know who the City Manager is, or why his position is so important. So when the water crisis hit, there wasn't a reservoir of good will out there for him to draw on. With Mayor Bennett being on vacation overseas, Powers has become the face of City Hall, and that's a face most people in Salem aren't familiar with.

While many around you recognize your quiet approach, the tendency to listen first, and think before speaking, several said they would like to see you be a little more expansive in your communications, particularly in terms of offering more of your views on things sooner, sharing your vision, and articulating where you stand.

Salem doesn't have its own TV stations, and the Statesman Journal rarely reports on City Hall goings-on absent a big story like the current water crisis. So it's kind of tough for Powers to share his City Manager vision when there aren't many ways to communicate it other than the City of Salem Facebook page, Still, this is a valid criticism.

Bottom line: about a year and a half ago Powers got some constructive feedback on his management approach. I have no idea if he took that feedback from his Performance Evaluation to heart, or if anyone at the City of Salem helped him adjust his communication style, which was the key deficiency identified in the 2017 evaluation.

Regardless, it sure seems like Powers could benefit from some "coaching" as regards the way he communicates both with the public and other City staff. There's a lot to like about his tendency to be hands-off -- except when some hands needed to be guiding the management wheel of the City of Salem, as was the case with the water crisis.

November 16, 2016

Here's a 3 1/2 minute excerpt from a half-hour interview Greg Fabos and I did with Ken Adams on his Salem CCTV show, "The Valley View." After some remarks by me, Greg speaks about how he's seen Salem change for the worse over the years when it comes to rich developers being able to trample on the rights of ordinary people.

He says:

There's a real negative feeling about what's happening in Salem, and I've been here a long time. It used to be a nice well-run city with, I felt, good concern for its citizens. Right now, it's at loose ends. No one is stepping up to the plate to represent concerned citizens. And it's flipped over to the advantage or benefit of the developer.

This is a disturbing tale of how City of Salem officials have allowed a subdivision developer to trample the rights of neighbors, while ignoring two women's requests to explain how repeated screw-ups keep happening.

The subdivision is Sabre Ridge Estates, off of Sunnyside Road in south Salem. The women are Lisa Basalto and her mother, Lynn. Lisa wrote to me several weeks ago, looking for someone to help with her extremely frustrating situation.

...Something sure seems to be amiss at City Hall -- especially, the Public Works Department headed up by Peter Fernandez.

I readily admit that I'm not a Fernandez fan (to put it mildly), having documented the favoritism and backroom dealmaking he engaged in with U.S. Bank President Ryan Allbritton during the 2013 State Street tree removal debacle. Since, I've heard credible reports that Fernandez meets regularly with Salem's largest developers to discuss how the City can help them achieve their money-making plans as smoothly as possible.

So when I heard about what the Basaltos has gone through, I thought "Sad, but not surprising; ordinary citizens regularly get screwed-over by City of Salem officials who care a lot more about pleasing the Powers That Be in this town than complying with governmental regulations and ethical norms."

Mayor Anna Peterson, Mayor-elect Chuck Bennett, City Manager Steve Powers, and Salem's eight city councilors need to start kicking some butt at City Hall, stopping the outrageous way Lisa has been treated by City officials, which I'm confident happens to many other ordinary citizens who don't get the white glove treatment extended to developers with lots of money and power.

So even though the favoritism given to developers over ordinary citizens preceded his arrival, it sure seems like Powers now bears a lot of responsibility for how people are being mistreated by City staff when they ask perfectly reasonable questions about blatantly unreasonable goings-on involving large-scale developments in Salem.

There needs to be some housecleaning at City Hall.

My view is that so long as Peter Fernandez is Public Works Director, this shows that the Mayor, City Manager, and City Council aren't really concerned about putting average citizens on an equal playing field with Salem's Rich and Powerful.

At the very least, there should be a public, open, and extensive review of how Fernandez has been managing (and mismanaging) Public Works. Citizens familiar with the litany of screw-ups in this department should be able to have their say before a review board charged with deciding whether Fernandez should remain in his job.

May 09, 2016

The Salem City Manager heads up an organization with over 1,100 employees and a $466 million budget. In the private sector, a CEO with these responsibilities likely would earn $1 million a year, or thereabouts.

Steve Powers' annual salary, though, must be in the neighborhood of $176,000. (That's what his predecessor, Linda Norris, was slated to earn in 2015.)

So Powers has a big job that pays comparatively little, pretty typical for government work. Yet he's accomplished the goal he set out at age 20: become a City Manager.

When I heard that, I thought, Wow. How many 20 year olds are able to successfully predict what they'll be doing when they're 50'ish? And how many set their sights on being a City Manager?

Given this, you might think that Powers possesses a healthy supply of Nerdness.

Indeed, he comes across as a serious guy who chooses his words carefully. He also had renamed his talk "The Fine Art and Science of City Management." However, I liked his sense of humor -- which is more striking because his jokes come as a surprise, spoken in the same studious manner, yet with an appealing dry wit.

For example, Powers told us that his previous job was the City Administrator of Ann Arbor, Michigan, "where Bernie Sanders is viewed as a moderate."

A friend who did some research on this told me that the Ann Arbor City Council is dominated by folks on the left side of the political spectrum, whereas the Salem City Council leans decidedly to the right, given the Chamber of Commerce's ability to swing/buy elections through large PAC (political action committee) contributions to conservative candidates.

Likely this is part of the reason City Manager Powers was careful to point out that his job is to implement priorities set by the Mayor and the other eight members of the City Council, not to establish them.

He's got a really tough job. Powers spoke about how he has to relate to the citizenry, to those 1,100 City of Salem employees he manages, and to the City Council -- which essentially is his board of directors. "I can be fired at any council meeting," Powers said.

I came away impressed with his dedication, sincerity, and obvious commitment to public service (the past 30 years, he's been working for local governments).

Yeah, it was kind of corny, and reminded me of my days in the Boy Scouts, but I enjoyed when Powers read aloud the Code of Ethics for the association of city management types he belongs to, prefacing it with "this is important." I also liked it when he told the City Club audience, albeit in an implied fashion rather than explicitly, that he'd choose those ethics over a city council instruction to do something he didn't think was proper.

When he came to Salem last year, Powers said "I'm here to help Salem become the best city in the United States." During the Q&A part of his talk, he responded to a City Club member who asked how this was going to happen. I wasn't wildly excited about his answer, but it probably was about all he could say.

Powers said that the City's fiscal health has to continue. "A broke city can't be best." He wants the City of Salem to meet citizens' expectations, and to be open to working with others.

So I got the impression that Powers isn't a City Manager who will actively push for a certain vision of what Salem should become. At least, not yet. In Ann Arbor he worked with a liberal community that was represented by liberal city councilors. Here, he's got a liberal-leaning citizenry who, at the moment, are represented by a majority of conservative city councilors.

(That could change on May 17 if Carole Smith were to be elected Mayor, and Cara Kaser, Matt Ausec, and Sally Cook were elected as city councilors; then progressives would have a 5-4 majority -- those four plus Tom Andersen.)

Another questioner asked about the difference between "communication" and "engagement." Powers gave a good answer, agreeing that these aren't at all the same. This is one of my pet peeves about how high-ranking City officials have acted before Powers came to town.

Their idea of reaching out to citizens was to communicate an already-decided-on course of action, like building a new police facility next to Mirror Pond on the Civic Center campus. They never engaged the Salem community in planning for the police facility, so were surprised when there was so much resistance to plans people had never heard about, or been involved in.

Powers said that City staff would be looking at agencies that already do a good job of engaging the public, like the Parks Department, using their approaches as a model for the rest of city government. Smart move. I took part in the planning process for Minto Brown Island Park and found it wonderfully clear, productive, and transparent.

Steve Powers has only been in Salem for about six months.

He seems to be making some positive changes at City Hall. I came away from his City Club talk feeling like this town is fortunate to have him managing city government. Yet I also felt a bit frustrated that he couldn't give a rousing speech that had people applauding specific proposals for making Salem a more livable and vibrant community.

Too early for that? Sure.

Powers can't be criticized for lacking a vision of what this town can become, since Salemians haven't been able to come up with such a vision themselves. Thus City government, along with others, has been muddling along, doing this and doing that, which doesn't add up to a coherent, collaborative, compelling picture of Salem 2025 -- or whatever we want to call it.

Update: I've heard that Powers is an avid bicyclist. It was good to hear him say, in response to a question about biking, walking, and mass transit: "To be a city businesses and people choose, we need to provide transportation options beyond the single-person automobile."

I also was pleased to hear Powers report that the City of Salem is beginning to get off using Urban Renewal funds for the capital maintenance of downtown parking garages. This has been an inappropriate use of Urban Renewal money for quite a while. The City does a poor job of maintaining what it owns (just look at how City Hall is falling apart). Maintenance should be budgeted for like any competent business or person would do, not deferred or paid with Urban Renewal funds.